The present invention claims the benefit of Korean Patent Applications No. 2004-0019996 filed in Korea on Mar. 24, 2004 and No. 2004-0059042 filed in Korea on Jul. 28, 2004, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for manufacturing a substrate for a semiconductor device, a liquid crystal display device and so on.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
To manufacture, in general, a deposition process of depositing a thin film, a photolithography process of light-exposing or light-shielding a selected region of the thin film using a photosensitive material, an etching process of removing the selected region and a cleaning process of removing residuals are repeated several times.
Such respective processes are conducted in an apparatus including respective process chambers. Recently, as the apparatus is used a cluster which includes a transferring chamber transferring the substrate and a load-lock chamber storing the substrate temporarily and connected to the transferring chamber as well as the multiple process chambers. The cluster includes a process chamber such as a plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) device and a dry etcher.
FIG. 1 is a schematic view of a cluster according to the related art.
As shown in FIG. 1, a cluster includes a load-lock chamber 20, a transferring chamber 40 and a plurality of process chambers 30. The load-lock chamber 20 is connected to a storing portion 10 loading a plurality of substrates 50.
In the transferring chamber 40, a transferring chamber robot 42 is arranged to transfer the substrate 50 between the load-lock chamber 20 and the process chambers 30. In the storing portion 10, a storing portion robot 12 is arranged to input the substrate 50 to the load-lock chamber 20 and to output the substrate 50 from the load-lock chamber 20.
Meanwhile, a portion of the process chambers 30 may be used as a chamber for preheating or cooling the substrate 50 prior to inputting the substrate 50 to the process chamber 30. Furthermore, a number of the load-lock chamber 20 and the process chamber 30 may be varied.
Hereinafter, the moving process of the substrate will be explained in processes for manufacturing the substrate using the related art cluster.
At first, the storing portion robot 12 inputs the substrate 50 from the storing portion 10 to the load-lock chamber 20. At this time, the load-lock chamber 20 is under atmospheric pressure, and a first door 24 to the transferring chamber 40 is closed.
When the substrate 50 is placed on the load-lock chamber 20 and the storing portion robot 12 goes out of the load-lock chamber 20, a second door 22 to the storing portion 10 is closed and a pumping process is conducted to make the load-lock chamber 20 under vacuum.
When vacuum of the load-lock chamber 20 is equal to that of the process chamber 30 or the transferring chamber 40, the first door 24 is open and the transferring chamber robot 42 transfers the untreated substrate 50 from the load-lock chamber 20 to the process chamber 30.
When the substrate 50 is inputted into the process chamber 30, a process depending upon the process chamber 30 is conducted. When the process is finished in the process chamber 30, the transferring chamber robot 42 goes into the process chamber 30 and outputs the substrate 50. Then, when the substrate 50 is placed on the load-lock chamber 20, the storing portion robot 12 outputs it to the storing portion 10.
In the related art cluster as the apparatus for manufacturing the substrate, the transferring chamber has a polygon shape, and the process chambers are arranged along the outline of the transferring chamber. Therefore, a number and an arrangement of the process chambers are restricted.
Recently, the process chamber and the transferring chamber have larger sizes as the substrate has a larger size. However, an increase rate for sizes of the process chamber and the transferring chamber is greater than that of the substrate, in particular, an increase rate for the transferring chamber is greater than that of the process chamber. Therefore, a space for establishing the apparatus for manufacturing the substrate increases greatly.